Internal Linking for SEO: A Beginner’s Guide to Linking Your Own Pages

Most people think of SEO links as backlinks from other websites. Those matter, but there’s another kind of link you control completely, costs nothing and is often ignored: internal links, the links between pages on your own site.

On WebTechHelp I’ve added “Related guides” sections and contextual links to every new and rewritten article, because internal links help Google find, understand and prioritise pages. They also keep readers on the site longer. In this guide I’ll show you how to do the same, without overthinking it.

New to SEO? Start with my beginner’s guide to how SEO works.

What is an internal link?

An internal link is any link from one page on your domain to another page on the same domain. They come in a few forms:

• Navigation links: menus, headers and footers.
• Contextual links: links inside the body text of an article, like the one above.
• Related posts and “further reading” sections.
• Breadcrumbs: Home > SEO > Internal linking.
• Category and tag archive links.

Contextual links usually carry the most meaning, because the surrounding text tells readers and search engines why the linked page is relevant.

Why internal links matter for SEO

1. Discovery. Google finds new pages largely by following links. Google’s own guidance says every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site.
2. Understanding. Anchor text and surrounding words help Google understand what the linked page is about.
3. Importance. Pages that many other pages link to are signalled as more important. Your homepage and key service pages usually get the most internal links.
4. User experience. Good internal links answer the reader’s next question and keep them exploring.
5. Spreading authority. When a page earns backlinks, internal links help pass some of that value on to related pages. My link building guide explains how backlinks work.

Google’s rules for links

Google’s link best practices are short and practical:

• Use crawlable links. Google reliably follows standard <a href="..."> links. Links that only work through JavaScript click events, or javascript: URLs, may not be followed.
• Write descriptive anchor text. Google says good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page it links to.
• Avoid generic anchors like “click here” or “read more”. Test your anchor text by reading it out of context: does it say what the target page is about?
• Don’t stuff keywords into anchor text, and don’t cluster lots of links together without context.
• Use alt text on image links, because Google uses it like anchor text.

There’s no magic number of internal links per page. Link where it genuinely helps the reader.

Build topic clusters

The easiest way to plan internal links is to organise content into topic clusters:

• A pillar page covers a broad topic (for example, my content marketing guide).
• Cluster pages cover narrower subtopics in depth (email marketing, social media, SEO writing).
• The pillar links to every cluster page, and each cluster page links back to the pillar and to closely related siblings.

This structure makes your expertise on a topic obvious to both readers and search engines. Start from your keyword research: group related keywords, choose one page per main keyword, and decide which page is the pillar.

A simple internal linking workflow

Step 1: When you publish a new page

• Add 3–5 contextual links from the new page to relevant existing pages.
• Then go the other way: find 2–5 older pages on related topics and add a link to the new page. This step is the one most people skip, and it’s what helps Google discover new content quickly.
• To find related pages, search your own site in Google with site:yourdomain.com topic, or use WordPress’s link search when adding a link.

Step 2: Check important pages get enough links

Your money pages (services, top products, best guides) should be linked from many relevant places, including the homepage or menu where it makes sense.

In Google Search Console, open Links > Top linked pages (Internal links) to see which pages receive the most internal links. If an important page is near the bottom, add more links to it.

Step 3: Find and fix orphan pages

An orphan page has no internal links pointing to it. Search engines may struggle to find it, and readers never will. To find orphans:

1. Export the URLs from your XML sitemap.
2. Crawl your site with a tool like Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs).
3. Pages that appear in the sitemap but not in the crawl are probably orphans.

Then either link to them from relevant pages, merge them into stronger pages, or remove them if they’re no longer useful.

Step 4: Fix broken and redirected internal links

Broken internal links waste crawling and frustrate readers. Links to redirected URLs add an extra hop. Run a crawl every few months and update links to point straight to the final URL. This is a standard part of a technical SEO audit, and especially important after a website migration.

Internal linking in WordPress

• Block editor: highlight text, press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on Mac), and type part of a post title to search your own content.
• Breadcrumbs: Yoast SEO and Rank Math can add breadcrumbs, which create useful internal links and can appear in search results. My WordPress SEO guide covers the setup.
• Plugins: Some SEO plugins suggest internal links as you write. They’re helpful, but always check that suggestions make sense for the reader.
• Related posts: a related posts block at the end of articles helps, but it doesn’t replace hand-picked contextual links.

Common internal linking mistakes

• Using “click here” or the same exact-match anchor on every link.
• Linking only from new posts to old ones, never from old to new.
• Adding dozens of links that aren’t relevant.
• Letting important pages sit three or four clicks deep.
• Using nofollow on internal links (it gives Google less to work with and rarely helps).
• Leaving broken links after deleting or moving pages.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides on WebTechHelp

• On-page SEO checklist
• Link building for beginners
• Technical SEO audit checklist
• WordPress SEO guide
• Keyword research for beginners

Sources

• Google Search Central: Link best practices for Google
• Search Engine Land: Google publishes new link best practices
• Google Search Console Help: Links report